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Lack Of Good Analyses Contributes To The Decline Of The ‘West’
What really hit me last year was the dearth of correct analyses in main stream media and in politics with regards to the war in Ukraine. Little if anything is based on facts. More than 90% of the published output is propaganda.
The 'western' plan was to draw Russia into Ukraine to then 'kill' it by economic sanctions. As Biden said when he announced those:
We have purposefully designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our Allies.
And I want to be clear: The United States is not doing this alone. For months, we’ve been building a coalition of partners representing well more than half of the global economy.
Twenty-seven members of the European Union, including France, Germany, Italy — as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and many others — to amplify the joint impact of our response.
I just spoke with the G7 leaders this morning, and we are in full and total agreement. We will limit Russia’s ability to do business in Dollars, Euros, Pounds, and Yen to be part of the global economy. We will limit their ability to do that. We are going to stunt the ability to finance and grow Rus- — the Russian military.
We’re going to impose major — and we’re going to impair their ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy.
We’ve already seen the impact of our actions on Russia’s currency, the Ruble, which early today hit its weakest level ever — ever in history. And the Russian stock market plunged today. The Russian government’s borrowing rate spiked by over 15 percent.
The assumptions behind these sanctions about the state of the Russian economy were completely wrong. Russia no longer had a low level economy. Yes, its GDP in dollar terms was much lower than those of most European states. But its GDP per capita measured at purchase power of the ruble was quite high. Russia's GDP also includes a much higher percentage of real production and a lower percentage of dubious 'services'. Its health care sector is 5.6% of its GDP. In the U.S. it is 16.7%, without creating a much better outcome. If one looks at Russia's production of steel, concrete and electricity per capita, things of real value, one can see that it is as much developed as other major middle income countries in Europe.
The sanctions not only failed but hit back at those who issued them. Just look at Europe's energy crisis. Due to the sanctions issued in 2014, when Russia reintegrated Crimea, it knew what was coming and had prepared for it. Within weeks the rubel went so high that the central bank intervened to lower it. 'western' companies in Russia were quickly taken over or replaced by Russian ones. Trade with China and other non-western countries grew immensely. Russia's total GDP decline in 2022 will be 2.5-2.9%, not the 20+% some western 'experts' had predicted. Some of the European countries that issued the sanctions will have a much sharper decline.
Russia was and is rich. It produces lots of food and has all the natural resources it could wish for. Its economy is mostly self sufficient. Its population is well educated. It has the military means to defend itself. How anyone thought that Russia could be brought to its knees by sanctions is beyond me.
Them came the war. In April the attempt to make peace with Kiev failed after the U.S. prevented Kiev from signing a deal. In consequence the Russia forces pulled back from Kiev. It never had had enough troops there to conquer the city. (One needs 1 soldier per ~40 inhabitants to occupy a city. Russia had only half of the needed force near Kiev.) The 'experts' called that a 'defeat' when in reality Russia had switched to a different plan that required a different disposition of force. It next took the Luhansk Oblast from Ukraine and switched to defensive tactics. The new aim was to bleed the Ukrainian forces while incurring few Russian losses.
Then came the Ukrainian attempt to take Kherson. That failed. A parallel Ukrainian attempt in the Kharkiv region was more successful as Russia had already removed most of its forces from that area. But take a map and look at the Kharkiv area that Russia 'lost'. It has little industry and no important natural resources. What is its actual value for Russia? The southern land corridor from Russia to Crimea was way more important and that is where the troops had gone.
The Kherson region west of the Dnieper turned out to be difficult to supply. The new military command wanted the 30,000 troops holding it to move elsewhere. The Russian troops moved to the east side of the Dnieper without any losses. The Ukrainian military command in that area acknowledges that it failed in its main mission:
[Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk, who was tasked with leading the Kherson counteroffensive] set out to bisect the Russian-occupied area on the west side of the Dnieper and trap the Russian forces. “My task was not only to liberate the territory,” he said. “My task from the start was to occlude and destroy the force. That is, to not let them leave or exist.”
The first task was fulfilled by Kovalchuk's successor only after the Russian forces had withdrawn from the area. The second part of the task was, despite high Ukrainian losses, left unfulfilled.
Like with the Russian pullback from Kiev the 'experts' claimed that the move east of Kharkiv as well as into the Kherson region were Ukrainian victories. From a military perspective neither qualifies as such.
Now you have BBC 'experts' predicting ways the conflict could go in 2023. There analyses of the real situation are so bad that you wonder what disinformation they are based on.
Michael Clarke, associate director of the Strategic Studies Institute, Exeter, UK
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Both sides need a pause but the Ukrainians are better equipped and motivated to keep going, and we can expect them to maintain the pressure, at least in the Donbas.
Around Kreminna and Svatove they are very close to a big breakthrough that would throw Russian forces 40 miles back to the next natural defensive line, close to where their invasion effectively began in February.
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Andrei Piontkovsky, scientist and analyst based in Washington DC
Ukraine will win by restoring completely its territorial integrity by spring 2023 at the latest. Two factors are shaping this conclusion.
One is the motivation, determination and courage of the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian nation as a whole, which is unprecedented in modern war history.
The other is the fact that, after years of appeasement of a Russian dictator, the West has finally grown up to realise the magnitude of historical challenge it faces.
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Barbara Zanchetta, Department of War Studies, King's College London
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The costs of the war, both material and human, might break the level of commitment of the Russian political elite. The key will be inside Russia.
Past wars in which miscalculation was a crucial element, such as Vietnam for United States, or Afghanistan for the Soviet Union, only ended in this way. Domestic political conditions shifted in the country that had miscalculated, making exit – either "honourable" or not – the only viable option.
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Sadly, this will continue to be a long-protracted political, economic and military battle of resolve. And by the end of 2023 it will most probably still be ongoing.
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Ben Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe
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By January, Ukraine could be in a position to begin the final phase of the campaign which is the liberation of Crimea.
We know from history that war is a test of will and a test of logistics. When I see the determination of the Ukrainian people and soldiers, and the rapidly improving logistical situation for Ukraine, I see no other outcome but a Russian defeat.
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David Gendelman, military expert based in Israel
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The occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions will continue but a major Russian breakthrough like a drive from the south to Pavlograd to encircle the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas is less likely.
More probable is a continuation of current tactics – a slow grinding of Ukrainian forces on narrow directions and a slow advance, like in Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas, with possible same tactics in Svatove-Kreminna area.
I can confidently say that, except for a small likelihood for the very last prediction to be true for some time, all others conclusions above are delusional nonsense. They are not based on facts and numbers but on wishful thinking. They are in themselves mere propaganda. (Watch Webb Union and History Legends having fun with them.)
The delusion about the military state of the war is even worse when it comes to the political side.
Putin, unaccustomed to losing, is increasingly isolated as war falters
A new gulf is emerging between the president and much of the country’s elite
The above headline is from today's Washington Post. The unfounded basic assumption of the piece is that Russia is failing in its war. Its conclusions rest on some Carnegie 'expert' and anonymous sources in Russia. It is contradicted by the reality of the war and the results of current polls in Russia which show strong support for Putin and the government. It also ignores the fact that Russia has good relation with most of the rest of the world and that it also has powerful allies:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed Friday to deepen their bilateral cooperation against the backdrop of Moscow’s 10-month war in Ukraine, which weathered another night of drone and rocket attacks following a massive missile bombardment.
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Putin, during his call with Xi, noted that military cooperation has a “special place” in the relationship between their countries. He said the Kremlin aimed to “strengthen the cooperation between the armed forces of Russia and China.”
Xi, in turn, said through a translator that “in the face of a difficult and far from straightforward international situation,” Beijing was ready “to increase strategic cooperation with Russia, provide each other with development opportunities, be global partners for the benefit of the peoples of our countries and in the interests of stability around the world.”
Ties between Moscow and Beijing have grown stronger since Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Just last week, Moscow and Beijing held joint naval drills in the East China Sea.
China, which has promised a “no limits” friendship with Russia, has pointedly refused to criticize Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking the Kremlin, and has blasted the punishing sanctions imposed on Russia.
Russia, in turn, has strongly backed China amid the tensions with the U.S. over Taiwan.
'Increasingly isolated' seems to mean something different to the Washington Post writer than to the rest of the world.
The delusion and lack of good analyses about military and political issues is accompanied by a delusion about the economic future of the 'west'.
Here is a bit of reality:
Credit Suisse contributor Zoltan Pozsar has continued his ongoing series about Bretton Woods III where commodities will dictate the new world order. For his last dispatch of the year, he described how the world is now shifting to a multipolar order “being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state).”
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“My sense is that the market is starting to realize that the world is going from unipolar to multipolar politically, but the market has yet to make the leap that in the emerging multipolar world order, cross-currency bases will be smaller, commodity bases will be greater, and inflation rates in the West will be higher,” the author explained.
I could go on about these issues for some time.
My feel this year was that political, economical and military issues discussed in the main stream media have parted from the objective reality more than they have done at any previous time in my life. I sometimes look into a mirror and think 'well, maybe its just you.' But it is not just me. Other analysts have come to similar conclusion. But, like me, neither of them gets quoted in main stream media and neither is paid in a traditional sense to publish on these issues.
Which, thinking of it, may well be the root of this theme.
Great summary of the situation. If you take a step back and consider this year, and what Putin said at the outset of the SMO,and reread those comments today, it will now be clear that this entire series of events has been a layered project. The immediate and obvious layer are of course those objectives Putin declared in February after the West blew off, entirely, his proposals in late 2021 – Ukraine neutrality, protection of the Russians in eastern Ukraine, demilitarization, and denazification. And, possibly, had the West allowed Zelensky to work out a cease fire last March with Putin, these might have been the immediate ends achieved. But, overlaying all this, is the bigger issue, an enormous issue, made clear by the fact that Putin and Xi of China met at the Olympics and declared a near treaty and alliance, which suggests that the SMO has become the vehicle to expose the Western system as nothing more than a continuation of over 400 years of colonial and imperialistic taking of resources and riches from the rest of the world. Look at the current situation clearly – Europe faces economic collapse, the United States is being exposed as unable to support the industrial elements needed to conduct a real war, Russia is showing the entire world it is, among all great powers, the power most independent, most secure in energy and resources and human capital, and China is being shown as vulnerable, needing energy supplies and unable to continue its rapid growth if the Western markets collapse.
In my opinion, Russia is going to become the leading Great Power of the 21st Century, and as this becomes clearer and clearer then the risks rise ever higher that, in desperation, the West will use nuclear weapons. This may be upon us within days, actually. Just today there are reports of US soldiers in Ukraine, in uniform, even, advising. Putin now calls this a war, not a special military operation, surely a war with the West and NATO.
What is becoming ever more clear, surely since the Soviet Union fell in 1990, is how savage, how militaristic, how destructive the US based Western system has become (and always has been, for over 400 years).
I am afraid to say this, but it may be that the only way to thread this needle between Russian victory and a nuclear ash cloud is if the Russian forces in this winter offensive cause a sudden collapse of the Ukrainian forces, everywhere, such that the collapse of Ukraine is clear to everyone before greater NATO involvement occurs. And it is not at all clear how the Western cognitive dissonance once this defeat becomes obvious will play out. Not well, I fear.
Posted by: Boomheist | Dec 30 2022 19:26 utc | 33
I think I’m seeing important cracks in the alliance in America that props up the deeply flawed narrative that Ukraine and Zelenskyy represent an Army of Light, and that the AOL has Russia on the ropes.
That alliance had some structural weaknesses from the beginning, and they are fault lines that some of the important cracks are developing from. A very important one is that fundamentally this is Democrat President Biden’s war, albeit he has Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, John McCain’s partner in warmongering, on his side. That it’s Graham who’s the frontman for the Republicans, and not a Trump surrogate, is important, and worth remembering.
Dovetailing with it being Democrat President Joe Biden’s war is the whole fiasco of Hunter Biden, who famously got paid a lot of money from Burisma, in Ukraine. That precipitated Trump’s phone call to Ukraine, which was later used as one of the excuses to impeach him. Remember that, as Trump loyalists certainly do, and they think of Ukraine’s government as being very suspect.
Then, as mentioned, there is Tucker Carlson, who appeals to a wide range of demographics, far more than just Trump voters. More young people watch him than CNN or MSNBC, so too more Democrats than either. There is also Tulsi Gabbard of course, who has now guest hosted his show twice, and her friend (yes, they are friends) Glenn Greenwald, who became prominent among Democrats for helping to expose the sins of the Bush administration’s use of warmongering. And now there is the comedian/commentator Jimmy Dore, who relentlessly bashes the unholy way that America set up the Nazi backed coalition in Ukraine to provoke a conflict with Russia.
In short, you have a solid chunk of Republicans who despise Biden’s waste of lives and money in a doomed effort against Russia (possibly because they resent not concentrating on China), and there’s a solid chunk of true anti Forever War progressives who will call out America’s cynical machinations with Ukraine for what they are. This represents a large and diverse group that can’t be intimidated into not saying “I told you so!” as the warmongers plans for Ukraine keep running into roadblocks and experiencing failures.
There is just no way to put enough lipstick on the pig of a hundred billion dollars getting spent on Ukraine instead of getting spent on America. Republicans resent the money not getting spent on border security, fighting crime, the infrastructure, and lowering taxes and the national debt, Progressives resent the money not getting spent on lowering taxes for the 99%, creating jobs by investing in infrastructure work, and improving the lot of those worst off.
In New York City this weekend there is an anti-war rally, one that Jimmy Dore helped advertise, that promotes itself as being an alliance of Sanders voters, Trump voters, third party voters, and everyone else who can’t be categorized.
Biden has already had his armor cracked open because of the humiliating way that America left Afghanistan. And now the Republicans in the House will spend all year torturing “the Big Guy” for the revelations found in Hunter Biden’s laptop, some of which bolster our knowledge of how big a scam his working for a Ukrainian outfit was.
Biden is on record calling Hunter the smartest guy he knows, and that smartest guy recorded video of himself dealing with complaints from the very young, heavily accented, sex worker who might have been a victim of sex trafficking.
Hunter Biden’s baby mama, the former dancer at an adult club, is now filing with the courts over various matters, and has been calling out Hunter for his history of not revealing his finances. She is filing to get their daughter’s last name changed to Biden.
Those last details could be categorized as being just sordid tidbits, but they’ll serve well as additional grist for the mill, the mill that keeps churning along and which provides more and more evidence of Biden’s lies and corruption, as well as his ineptness and declining faculties. America’s support for the continued financing of Ukraine is, imo, tightly tied to the fate of the Biden administration. If it loses the confidence and good will of the voters, a whole lot of the administration’s baggage is going to get loose. That’s just how power works, and the powerful in America who see themself as having invested in the Democrats (as well as the Republicans) won’t allow that investment to become devalued. They’ll insist that steps be taken to restore its popularity, and to maintain its influence, so it can keep providing the expected returns to its investors.
Posted by: Babel-17 | Dec 30 2022 21:50 utc | 72
b: “One needs 1 soldier per ~40 inhabitants to occupy a city.”
I have serious problems with these sorts of figures. It depends on what one means by “occupy” (or “Conquer”) a city. The overall discussion is usually referred to as “stability operations” – maintaining civil order and the orderly transition of government to military control and hence to a new civil government.
A note I found elsewhere says the following:
The historical data suggests 5 to 50 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. That would mean 14,500 to 145,000 troops for your fictional city. By comparison, the NYPD has 55,000 police for 8,500,000 inhabitants, or 6.5 police per 1,000 inhabitants, which serves as a reality check on the COIN data. Counterinsurgency ranges from “ordinary” numbers of police to “ten times ordinary” numbers.
Discussing the issue of a shortfall of troops in Iraq is here:
A Proven Formula for How Many Troops We Need
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/05/09/a-proven-formula-for-how-many-troops-we-need/5c6dbfc9-33f8-4648-bd07-40d244a1daa4/
When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the U.S. Army had more than 1.6 million men within the borders of the defeated Nazi state. Overnight they became occupation troops: Their orders were to spread out over every square mile of German territory and demonstrate without a doubt that they were in charge. U.S. troops secured every road junction, bridge, border post, government building, factory, bank, warehouse; anything of the slightest conceivable importance had a guard of GIs around it, and so did a good many things of little or no importance, too.
Army plans called for an occupation force of some 400,000 in the American zone for the first 18 months — or one U.S. soldier for every 40 Germans.
When NATO forces went into Kosovo in 1999, they followed the same proven formula: 50,000 troops for a population of 2 million, one soldier for every 40 inhabitants. A recent Rand Corp. study by military analyst James Quinlivan concluded that the bare minimum ratio to provide security for the inhabitants of an occupied territory, let alone deal with an active insurgency, is one to 50.
This is undoubtedly where b gets his figures.
Note this sentence, however:
Their orders were to spread out over every square mile of German territory and demonstrate without a doubt that they were in charge. U.S. troops secured every road junction, bridge, border post, government building, factory, bank, warehouse; anything of the slightest conceivable importance had a guard of GIs around it, and so did a good many things of little or no importance, too.
Do you really need to do that to control a city? I think not. In fact, an argument can be made that they more you shove your soldiers in the citizens’ faces and control their every action, the more resentment you create against your occupation. This is a natural human reaction to foreign occupation, and we’ve seen that in every single US occupation and indeed many foreign nation occupations of other nations.
First, who are the inhabitants of your city? Are they a tribal society where everyone is born with an AK-47 and an RPG-7 in their cribs? Or are they soft Europeans with little history of insurgency in modern times?
Second, what are your goals in controlling the environment? Do you need to worry about serious insurgency – people blowing up your tanks with antitank weapons, sniping your soldiers, blowing up your HQ? Or do you just need to control a few strategic points like water, power, armories and main government buildings with records of importance?
Third, what is you disposition of forces? Have you dispersed them all over hell (like the US in Germany as mentioned) in an attempt to control every street corner, like the US did in Berlin in WWII or in Iraq? Or are your forces concentrated in sufficient strength that it would take a battalion tactical group with armor and artillery support to make a dent in them?
I saw a video from Iraq of a US soldier guarding a post through the view of the sniper scope by an Iraqi sniper. The US soldier is standing around like he had a sign on him saying, “I’m a moronic US soldier! Shoot me!” This is what happens when you disperse your troops all over hell.
Fourth, what is your military goal? Are you trying to capture a bunch of insurgents like in Fallujah or Aleppo? Or are you just trying to grab the members of the government and their local security services?
Fifth, what is your political goal? Are you trying to overthrow a government? Or are you trying to seize the resources of the city? Are you trying to exert control directly over the population in terms of their behavior?
Sixth, what is the perception of the citizens towards your forces? Do they hate you? Do they not care? What is the percentage of each?
Seventh, what is the military capability of any remaining opposing forces inside the city?
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you assume any given number of troops will be needed to “control” or “occupy” a given city.
There is also the question of providing security and rule of law for the inhabitants, not allowing them to be preyed on by criminals in the absence of the regular police. Usually this can be handled by simply continuing to use the existing police force, but under your military control.
I submit that a Russian military force of say, 150,000 could easily control a city of 1-2 million Ukrainians provided they kept their forces dispersed in a manner which made each unit a real problem for anyone to attack, had a rapid reaction force which could reinforce any unit that got into trouble, and any Ukrainian forces previously in the city who might be motivated to resist were already pretty much decimated.
Also note that the occupation of Kosovo, an area of two million, were only occupied by 50,000 troops. Kiev before the war had 3 million. Reportedly this has been reduced to a third of that as the war progressed. So could 50,000 Russia troops occupy Kiev? Quite possible. 150,000 certainly could.
Civilians are not the problem – combatants are the problem. It all depends on who are your potential combatants, what are they armed with, how organized are they, and what is their number relative to your own, and how you have organized your control of the city.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Dec 30 2022 22:28 utc | 81
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